The Jungle of Working-Class Decay

There are truths the mainstream will never say out loud. In working-class indigenous communities across Britain, problems run deeper than poverty, unemployment, or addiction. There’s a corrosive mindset — a blind idolisation of mediocrity, combined with a hypocritical hatred for anyone who dares to rise above the pack. Success is not celebrated, it’s punished. Those who do well are branded as traitors or targets, while those who wallow in stagnation are cheered on for their “authenticity.”

Some ethnic communities, for all their struggles, at least have solidarity. They look after their own, they build networks, they pool resources, and they protect the next generation. But others — particularly in the broken-down estates and pubs of places like Rochdale — have become little more than a jungle of selfishness, where loyalty stretches no further than a WAG’s purse or an offspring’s gain. Anything beyond that is met with indifference or, worse, venom.

Rochdale epitomises this decay. It’s a borough where, if you’ve got no money, you have a life-threatening disease. It’s survival of the nastiest, not survival of the fittest. Families turn on each other, neighbours betray neighbours, and the so-called community eats itself alive. Rochdale is not just a shithole — it’s a warning sign to Britain of what happens when corruption, apathy, and hypocrisy take root.

And let’s be clear: our editor is not from Rochdale. He doesn’t want to be in the Rochdale jungle anymore than the Rochdale animals want him there. But the truth has to be spoken, because behind the façades of foodbanks, charity banners and cheap political slogans, Rochdale is also a hub of global crime links. The rot isn’t just in the streets; it runs up through the very structure of power, coordinated from Rochdale Town Hall in lockstep with a handful of bent Bobbies. Everyone knows that P Division has too large a proportion of rotten officers — and that fact alone stains the whole force’s credibility.

Rochdale is a borough where corruption is culture, where hypocrisy is currency, and where truth is silenced. But here, in TDB, we speak it plainly.

— The Dale Blues Editorial Board